Cleveland Plain Dealer:
New Orleans- When New Orleans plunged into darkness and spiraling chaos in the days after Katrina passed, Orleans Parish Prison, a 6,400-inmate city-within-a-city, plunged even deeper, bringing the complex of concrete lockups perilously close to a security and humanitarian meltdown.
Interviews with more than a dozen deputies and employees, many of whom didn't want to reveal their names for fear of losing their jobs, depict a five-day struggle in the aftermath of the Aug. 29 hurricane and subsequent flooding to keep destructive and desperate inmates at bay.
The ordeal was marked by escapes by inmates and wholesale job walk-offs by deputies. But when officers in charge finally went over the head of Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman and called Attorney General Charles Foti for state reinforcements, the ensuing rescue operation was nothing short of heroic. Everyone escaped by boat, as nearly every Sheriff's Office vehicle had been quickly and completely submerged.
Signs of the pandemonium can be seen throughout the sprawling complex of 10 concrete lockups, all of which took on 6 to 10 feet of water in the low-lying wedge of land near Interstate 10 and Tulane Avenue: tied-together blankets hanging from broken cell windows, scorch marks from fires, rescue boats scattered on streets and sidewalks.
Next to one smashed jail cell window, taped to the outside of the building, is a sign scrawled by an inmate, "We Need Help." On the perimeter of the same building, slung over razor wire atop a 16-foot fence, a cluster of thick blankets marks an apparent escape.
Chief Deputy Bill Short said Thursday that he could confirm only four escapes, but a full head count by the state Department of Corrections is still under way.
Short was promoted to his new position a week ago in acknowledgment of his steely command of the 800-inmate House of Detention during the storm and its aftermath.
Other deputies said they knew of more than a dozen escape attempts.
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